O beloved Abbey of the Holy Face, through tears they beheld thy walls, with rapture they kissed thy threshold!
"In all the great sea of ocean," said Serapion, when he had told the story of their wandering, "no such Earthly Paradise have we seen as this dear Abbey of our own!"
"Dear brethren," said the Abbot, "the seven years of your seeking have not been wasted if you have truly learned so much. Far from home have I never gone, but many things have come to me. To be ever, and to be tranquilly, and to be joyously, and to be strenuously, and to be thankfully and humbly at one with the blessed will of God—that is the Heavenly Paradise; and each of us, by God's grace, may have that within him. And whoso hath within him the Heavenly Paradise, hath here and now, and at all times and in every place, the true Earthly Paradise round about him."
Here ends the chapter of the Seven Years of Seeking.
["But do Thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us," chanted the Lector, as he closed the book. And the Prior struck the board, and the brethren arose and returned God thanks for the creatures of food and drink, and for that Earthly Paradise, ever at their door, of tranquil and joyous and strenuous and thankful and humble acceptance of God's will.]
The Guardians of the Door
There was once an orphan girl, far away in a little village on the edge of the moors. She lived in a hovel thatched with reeds, and this was the poorest and the last of all the houses, and stood quite by itself among broom and whins by the wayside.
From the doorway the girl could look across the wild stretches of the moorland; and that was pleasant enough on a summer day, for then the air is clear and golden, and the moor is purple with the bloom of the ling, and there are red and yellow patches of bracken, and here and there a rowan tree grows among the big grey boulders with clusters of reddening berries. But at night, and especially on a winter night, the darkness was so wide and so lonely that it was hard not to feel afraid sometimes. The wind, when it blew in the dark, was full of strange and mournful voices; and when there was no wind, Mary could hear the cries and calls of the wild creatures on the moor.
Mary was fourteen when she lost her father. He was a rough idle good-for-nothing, and one stormy night on his way home from the tavern he went astray and was found dead in the snow. Her mother had died when she was so small a child that Mary could scarcely remember her face. So it happened that she was left alone in the world, and all she possessed was a dog, some fowls, and her mother's spinning wheel.